woman.”
“She made an error in judgment,” Justin conceded. “But she does not deserve to be blamed for her own murder.”
“I forgot-you had a fondness for the lady. You might have had a chance with her, too. After all, you’re even younger than de Lusignan!”
“Let it lie, Durand,” Justin said, almost absently, for he’d resolved early on to shrug off the other man’s sarcasms; it was either that or kill him. And although he knew Durand would never admit it, he’d not been as unaffected by Arzhela’s death as he claimed.
“Well, we solved John’s mystery.” Durand helped himself to another piece of bread. “We discovered the identity of the mastermind behind the plot. Of course he’ll never know that. But as we go to our graves, we’ll have the satisfaction of knowing we did not fail him. Will that give you much comfort, de Quincy?”
“About as much as it gives you.” Justin broke off a small crust, chewed it slowly. “God damn de Lusignan! How could we let him outwit us again and again? What did you call him-Arzhela’s ‘stud’?”
“Blaming me, are you? What a surprise.”
“I am not blaming you, Durand. I misjudged the man, too. He seemed to be such a hothead, not capable of cold-blooded calculation like this.”
“A truly cunning wolf would pretend to be a sheepdog, at least until it was in the midst of the flock.” Durand slumped back against the icy, wet wall. “And from the bottom of this oubliette, he’s looking like a very cunning wolf, indeed.”
As Justin’s view was from the bottom of the oubliette, too, he was not inclined to argue, and so he let Durand have the last word. They stopped talking after that, each man alone with thoughts as bleak and bitter as their underground prison.
Justin moaned, turning his head from side to side. Durand crouched over him, his fingers knotting in the cloth of the younger man’s tunic. “Wake up!” he said sharply. “De Quincy, wake up!” Justin jerked upright, staring around him with glazed, unfocused eyes, and Durand loosened his hold, settled back on his haunches. “You were having a bad dream, man, no more than that.”
“I am living a bad dream,” Justin muttered. He did not remember the details of his dream, but his pulse was racing, his temples were damp with sweat, and his chest felt constricted with the weight of his dread. His waking hours were hurtful enough without dragging demons into his sleep, too.
“You were yelling like a man about to get gutted with a dull knife,” Durand shared, telling Justin more than he cared to know about his nightmare. “By the way, who is Aline?”
Justin’s breath stopped as memory of the nightmare came flooding back: He was trapped here in the dungeon, only now he was manacled to the wall, too. The trapdoor opened slowly and he saw a faceless figure laughing down at him. This unknown enemy was holding a small bundle. When he dangled the object above the opening, Justin realized it was his daughter; it was Aline. He lunged to the end of his chains, shouting. But it was too late. The man dropped her and she came plummeting down into the abyss, into the never ending dark.
“Christ Almighty…” he whispered, closing his eyes to blot out the terrifying vision.
“Well?” Durand prodded. “Who is Aline? Some peasant girl you ploughed and cropped? A fancy whore? A Southwark slut? Or did I mishear and you were really calling out for Claudine?”
“Rot in Hell!” Justin snarled, with such fury that Durand stared at him in surprise, seeking in vain to penetrate those cloaking shadows.
“I hit a sore spot, did I? I just thought you’d like to talk about your women for a while. I’ve already unburdened my conscience, told you about Barbe, my first, and Cristina, the mercer’s wife, and Adela, the runaway nun.”
“Do not forget Jacquetta and Richenda and Rosamund Clifford and Maid Marian and the Queen of Jerusalem,” Justin said caustically.
Once the initial shock of confinement had worn off, their role reversal had ended. Justin had retreated into the sanctuary of his silences while Durand launched sardonic monologues about John’s multitude of vices, old enemies who’d met unfortunate ends, and women he’d lain with. He either had a vivid imagination or more bedmates than any man since Adam, for to hear him tell it, he could not even cross the street without being accosted by a lustful wanton. He described some of these encounters in such loving detail that Justin began to regret having refused Claudine’s overtures, and he’d had a few feverish dreams about Molly.
“You sound downright jealous, de Quincy. Is it my fault that I’ve had more women in a fortnight than you have in your entire, pitiful life?”
“And how many of them did you pay for, Durand?” Justin stood up, moving away until he reached the wall. “Tell me this,” he said. “Is there anyone who’ll mourn you? Anyone at all?”
Durand was quiet for so long that Justin began to think he’d hit a sore spot, too. “There might be one,” he said at last. “Violette.”
“Who is she?”
“It is a long story, de Quincy.”
“I am not going anywhere, am I?”
“No, I suppose you’re not.” Durand rose, groped his way to the water bucket, where he stooped and drank. “This is the tale of a younger son, a father who loathed him, and an older half brother-a brother who did his utmost to make the lad’s life Hell on earth.”
Justin’s curiosity was stirred in spite of himself. “Why did they despise him?”
“The brother hated him because their father had put his first wife aside for the lad’s mother. The father hated him because his alluring young wife died in childbirth, leaving him with an unwanted, spare son, his mother’s murderer.”
“So what happened to him?”
“What do you think happened? The lad grew up nursing his bruises and blackened eyes and grudges of his own. You might say he bided his time. And then Elder Brother took a bride.”
“Violette?”
“Yes, Violette. Seventeen years old, sweet as a ripe strawberry, with skin like milk and three fat manors as her marriage portion.”
Justin waited, and then prompted, “Well?”
“Well what? Ah, you want to know about the lad and little Violette. He seduced her. Rather easily, too, or so I’ve been told.”
“So what are you saying, Durand? That you were the younger brother?”
“Not necessarily. How do you know I was not the elder brother? Or an interested neighbor, watching from afar. Or Violette’s kinsman. Nothing is as it seems, de Quincy, nothing.”
“That will make a fine epitaph for our gravestones,” Justin said darkly, vexed with himself for walking right into one of Durand’s webs, and this time the last word was to be his.
In the days that followed, Durand offered up other versions of his past. In one, he was estranged from his family because he’d balked at taking holy vows like a dutiful younger son. In another, he boasted of having lived as an outlaw. Once he even claimed to be a bastard son of the old king, Henry, and thus a half brother to John and Richard. But he never spoke of how he had entered the service of the queen.
Justin had given up trying to keep track of their days in confinement; what was the point? He had no way of even knowing when it was day and when it was night, and for some reason, that bothered him greatly. Sleep was becoming the enemy now, too. When it came at all, it brought troubled dreams. He’d lie awake for hours, listening to Durand’s cough, wondering how long they could survive under these conditions, wondering how long ere they went mad.
“Have you heard of St-Malo, de Quincy?”
It still startled him, the sudden sound of a human voice echoing from the surrounding dark. “Yes, it is a Breton port and an infamous pirate’s den. Why?”
“Did I ever tell you about a kinsman of mine, a notorious sea wolf?”
“So now you are a pirate’s whelp? You must think that the damp down here is rotting my brain, Durand. You
